Joan Acocella

Joan Acocella a New York dance critic, is the author of the only biography of the choreographer Mark Morris. She is the co-editor of André Levinson on Dance, and is now editing Nijinsky’s dairy.

Agringado

Joan Acocella, 14 December 1995

‘In France, we do it lying down,’ a French minister is reported to have said on first seeing the tango. He was not far wrong. The tango crystallised at the end of the 19th century in the brothels of Buenos Aires. It was a dance of prostitutes and pimps, and in its ineluctable rhythms, its belly-to-belly stance, its interlacing of legs, it reflected their professional concerns. Yet by the 1910s, it was the newest Parisian dance craze. Argentine whores were no doubt still doing it, but so was the Duchesse de Clermont-Tonnerre.

Pipe down back there! The Willa Cather Wars

Terry Castle, 14 December 2000

First, a fiery allegory – the reviewer’s house is burning down! After tossing the cats out of the window, she has time only to save one object before fleeing: either a compact disc...

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You gu gu and I gu gu: Vaslav Nijinsky

Andrew O’Hagan, 20 July 2000

Nijinsky began to lose his mind in a Swiss village in 1919. He was only 29 years old, still dazzling, animal-like, an Aschenbach vision on the Lido, a young man who could jump and pause in the...

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